Harold Thimbleby
MIT Press
ISBN: 0262201704
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Thimbleby has worked for many years to improve user interface design, or as the software aspect of human factors work is now known, Interaction Programming.
This book makes clear something that I had already started to suspect from other authors in the human interaction field such as Kuniavsky: that people in many overlapping fields all lay claim to a large part of requirements territory. To quality people, getting the requirements right is a key way to improve product quality. To product managers, controlling the requirements is a large part of managing your product portfolio. To human factors and user interface people, identifying and analysing what you want is largely a matter of user interface analysis and design.
Thimbleby wants to revolutionise user interface design with systematic analysis of tasks, e.g. with state machines, and constant attention to what users will experience. User interfaces should for instance
show what is on offer, what "affordances" are available to the user
recover from errors, or prevent them from happening
permit users to work in their own ways
enable users to customise their interfaces.
Does the software you are using do all that, simply and clearly?
This book is required reading for everyone involved in thinking out or designing user interfaces. It is also a detailed text suitable for students, and it is accompanied by a website with many resources for lecturers.
(c) Ian
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